Brenda Lee Browne

This is the story of Dante Brookes, a young man growing up in London in the late seventies and early eighties when sound systems ruled the party scene for young, Black British youths of Caribbean heritage. He navigates the loss of friends, police harassment and being a teenage father while forging a career as an MC. Dante stumbles into the acting profession and also becomes a writer. It is through these disparate experiences that he learns that the pen and mic are mightier than the sword.

• 198 x 129 mm
• 96 pages
• Paperback

Brenda Lee Browne was born in London to Antiguan parents. She studied journalism and started her career in the Black media before moving to Antigua in the mid-1980s where she began writing and publishing short stories and poetry. In the mid-1990s, she returned to the UK and gained an MA in writing from Sheffield Hallam University. She returned to Antigua in 2003 and established Just Write creative writing workshops and has worked with government agencies, adults and inmates at HMP in Antigua. Her work has appeared in a number of anthologies in the USA, UK and Canada as well as online. Brenda is the mother of one and a lover of cricket, chocolate and handbags.

Blog: handbagsandchocolate.wordpress

Five Stories from the Indian Diaspora

Khalil Rahman Ali

In Pursuit of Betterment, is a unique collection of five historical fiction stories of families from India, Guyana and the Caribbean, Mauritius, East Africa, and South Africa. The five families share a compelling desire and drive to achieve betterment through education, hard work, and business, against the backdrop of the histories of the countries they originate from, leave, and, those they reside in. Each story should resonate with readers of the Indian Diaspora and others, who have had to leave their homelands to explore better life chances in other countries.

The first story, The Billionaires, is set in India and London as the Shivwani family grows from humble beginnings, to international business success. Could they keep the family together despite such wealth?

Little Guyana is the story of Inshan Khan who was sent to London to study Law. His extended family also had to leave Guyana due to a decline in the local economy, and became part of the emergence of “Little Guyana” in New York. Where does the future lay for the Khans?

Murali Dharam of the beautiful island of Mauritius, known as “Chota Bharat” or Little India, also arrived in London to study Psychiatric Nursing. His romantic liaisons created family tensions both in Mauritius and England. How will these be resolved?

Manubhai Patel and his family were forcibly expelled from Uganda in 1972, and were faced with new challenges in Leicester, England, including racial harassment. Their Ugandan Asian community responded with sheer grit and determination to succeed. How will they fare?

The fifth story is set in Durban, South Africa where the largest population of Indians have settled outside India. Professor Yusuf mentors two young PhD students seeking answers about their country’s emergence from apartheid, to the pursuit of racial healing and harmony. How does this play out in the new “Rainbow” nation?

• 216 x 138 mm

• 392 pages

• Paperback

Khalil Rahman Ali is from Guyana, and a descendant of Indentured Indian labourers who migrated to work on the sugar plantations in the nineteenth century. His experiences through meeting and befriending other such descendants from the Caribbean, Mauritius, South Africa, East Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Canada, inspired him to complete In Pursuit of Betterment, the third of his historical fiction trilogy on the Indian Diaspora.

His novels offer glimpses into the lives and aspirations of people of the Diaspora who continue to strive hard for betterment. Khalil loves travelling and speaking about his writing, and has visited, and participated in conferences in India, New York, South Africa, and the UK.

He is a keen Indian singer and musician, and a follower of Cricket, Football, and other sports. Khalil hopes that his work will continue to help people in their pursuit of betterment.

Barbara Ellis

The hero of the Akan people of West Africa and our hero, Anancy, takes us on a journey through time and history. He reveals the heroic achievements of his people, and guides us through the traumas that were inflicted on his motherland by the European Invaders, from the 15th century onwards.

Anancy takes us back to December 1492, when the three galleons commanded by Christopher Columbus ran aground on the rocky shoreline of Ayiti (Haiti). The event was to have dire consequences for the inhabitants of the island – the Taino people – and later the African continent.

The enslavement and near extinction of the Taino people, through mining gold, silver and pearls for the Spanish invaders, created the demand for another source of free labour. Anancy is at the heart of the resistance to the enslavement of the local Taino people and the Africans in the ‘Recently Enslaved World’.

Anancy uses his dual personality – as a man and a spider – to resist and torment the slave masters, while inspiring and supporting his brothers and sisters to end their enslavement. He plays a central role in their resistance and ultimate liberation from the cane pieces throughout the islands of the Caribbean and on the mainland of South America.

• 216 x 138 mm
• 260 pages
• Paperback

Alan Springer

Be careful what you wish for...

In a puff of smoke and a flash of light, a genie appears from the computer to whisk the e-Kidz off to cyberspace ... to play games for ever and ever! It may be their wish come true, but this is no ordinary game. The genie gives them a dangerous mission: Clean up the internet.

The e-Kids head off on a thrilling surf-ride across the super-highway where they will encounter such perils as a swarm of bugs and cookies, evil pop-ups, chat-room predators and viruses, each in the form of fearsome monsters and super-villains.

Their journey takes them across the matrix to the centre of the World Wide Web where they must face the evil web-master in a final showdown.

Aimed at the 10 – 14 age-group, eKidz: Mission to Cyberspace tackles the global concern of internet safety in an exciting and intriguing way.

Find out more from the e-Kidz at www.ekidz.co

• 216 x 138
• 136 Pages
• Paperback

Carol Sammy

At the age of eighteen, Quintel Jones is faced with situations and challenges that demand a hasty step into maturity and manhood. In coping with a sick mother and impoverished circumstances, he is forced to grapple with realities that are often tough, while maintaining a heart for what is tender.

Strong, determined and sometimes feeling battered, he stoically holds on to what are left of any dreams he harboured. He must fight for his mother’s life, ensure his own survival and find joy in the people helping to shape the outcome of his existence - an English journalist, a beautiful woman, an orphan boy and a curious benefactor are amongst those to whom he attributes his eventual breakthrough.

There in Trinidad, the unglamorous yet compelling life of this young man blossoms with sumptuous intrigue, as Quintel battles head on with the painful issues of personal prejudices, poverty and love, social interaction and manly awakening.

• 216 x 138 mm
• 208 pages
• Paperback

Khalil Rahman Ali

It is the 6th of August 1985, and the final and deciding game of dominoes between three rival teams from the sugar plantation villages of Anna Catherina, Leonora and Cornelia Ida, in Demerara, Guyana, is underway. Michael “Histry Maan” Brown, the self-appointed coach to the Anna Catherina ACES, reverts to new tactics to pass sublime tips to his captain, Vishnu “Double Six” Prashad.

The game is played out at a time when Guyana and its peoples were still emerging from a history of struggle through African slavery, Portuguese, Indian and Chinese indentured labour, political independence, racial unrest, mass migration and economic downturn.

Michael, Vishnu and their friends use every means available to continue to survive, and to build their lives in their multi-racial, multi-religious and multi-cultural society.

The game of dominoes provides them with the opportunity to demonstrate their competitiveness, their search for unity, and their resolve to face up to their challenges.

Can they succeed as One People, One Nation, with One Destiny?

• 216 x 138 mm
• 188 pages
• Paperback

Donald Hinds

Summer 1947. Jamaican ex-serviceman Melbourne Welch stands at the corner of Effra Road and Rushworth Street in Brixton, south London, facing a tirade of abuse from the British Union of Fascists. It is a shocking contrast to the treatment he received three years earlier when grateful Britons welcomed the ‘loyal colonials’ who had come to help defend the Mother Country from Nazi tyranny.

How things had changed. Now out of uniform, and along with other non-white migrants, he and ‘his kind’ were seen as scroungers on the National Assistance; cheap labour occupying scarce housing; or salacious men on the hunt for women of easy virtue.

“You helped us to win the war now come and help us rebuild the Mother Country.”

This sentiment of British Empire unity might have been apocryphal but it was inhaled like a breath of fresh air by many West Indians. They answered the call and arrived in Britain from the late 1940s on ships such as the SS Almanzora and SS Auriga, and the iconic Empire Windrush. Former servicemen, like Melbourne Welch, chose to stay in the country they had helped defend after being demobbed. But for many, the dream of a better life and boundless opportunities was tainted with discrimination and hostility.

While the characters that inhabit Mother Country may be fictional, their stories are not uncommon and are set against the backdrop of actual events that took place in Britain from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. The story reflects how so many Britons reacted to Black migrants and how idioms such as “Keep Britain White” and “No (blacks) coloureds, no Irish” were commonplace. The narrative is rich, direct and laced with humour and pathos, but without bitterness.

• 216 x 138 mm
• 430 pages
• Paperback

Tamim Sadikali

Two families reunite for a feast on Eid ul-Fitr ­­– the day Muslims celebrate the end of the month of fasting – and boys who grew up together will meet again... as men. As the big day approaches, two of the men go to the mosque, one leaves his girlfriend and another watches porn. Nevertheless, they arrive intent on embracing the day. Old enmities are put aside as they take tentative steps towards each other.

This is a story about love, hate, longing and sexual dysfunction, all sifted through the fallout from the war on terror, and how we drift from each other, leaving every man stranded across a wasteland of atrophied connections. We witness the realities of a post-9/11 world filter down, touch individual lives, combine with some internal tension, and finally spill over.

• 216 x 138 mm
• 200 pages
• Paperback

Khalil Rahman Ali

It is 1843, and Mustafa Ali, an eighteen year-old Muslim Indian labourer from a village near Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, is forced to run away through the discovery of his forbidden love for Chandini Sharma, his Hindu childhood sweetheart. His dream was to find work, save his money and return to ask for his beloved’s hand.

This dream took him further afield into the promise of good work, pay and conditions as an indentured labourer on one of the sugar plantations, thousands of miles away in the colony of British Guiana on the mainland of South America. His experiences on the Grand Trunk Road across Uttar Pradesh to Bengal, and on the treacherous sea voyage from Calcutta to Georgetown, tested his resolve to the limit. Then, when he and his companions were allocated to their sugar plantations, they had to endure and overcome more challenges of racial, religious and cultural differences, in addition to the unrelenting and punishing workloads in extremely harsh conditions.

This is a story that is shared by millions of the descendents of indentured Indian labourers who are spread across all parts of the world. Will Mustafa succeed in his quest?

• 216 x 138 mm
• 312 pages
• Paperback

Dorbrene E. O'Marde

This is the fictional story that follows the intersecting contemporary lives of business men and women, socio-political activists and academics as they attempt to chart a new course towards Caribbean regional unity. The failed West Indies Federation (1958-1962) provides the political background and the less-than-successful present efforts of politicians at regional integration provide impetus for creative thinking, new approaches, different industries and new cultural possibilities.

The man-woman relationships of middle class mobile men and women – Black, White, Rastafari and Christian – are examined around issues of love, sex, fidelity, health, race and relocation ... sometimes in detail. The action takes place across six Caribbean countries providing a galloping travelogue experience through the region where the motivations of various sectors of the society are explored.

There is humour and music and cricket and food!

"In this his first novel, O'Marde joins the ranks of those undaunted Caribbean regionalists who use their unique writing skills to put forward a serious idea while keeping the reader thoroughly entertained. His language is rich and mature; his dream of ‘One Caribbean’ refreshingly pragmatic." Alwin Bully, PhD, Former UNESCO Advisor for Culture in the Caribbean

"... exciting reading and mature thinking wrapped in a Caribbean flavour ... This should be compulsory reading as the basis of regional thought, urgent dialogue and immediate action." Cuthwin Lake, FRCS, Antigua and Barbuda

• 216 x 138 mm
• 270 pages
• Paperback